John Hudson wrote:
> Christopher Fynn wrote:
>> Some questions for Karsten and others advocating "EOT only" support:
> That's not me, but I want to comment on your questions anyway.
>> If web-fonts (EOT, EOT-lite, or whatever) are intended not to work "on
>> the desktop", will they work in desktop based web-design applications
>> without invoking the browser?
>> With regard to fonts, do applications like Office Live, Google Docs
>> and other so called "cloud computing" apps count as web applications
>> or as desktop applications? Can I use embedded / linked fonts in
>> documents created with such apps? Do I use web fonts or normal TTF/OTF
>> fonts for this? If "web fonts", what happens when I want to edit these
>> same documents in a local application? What fonts do I use when I'm
>> using a word processor to design web pages with embedded fonts?
> It seems to me that what these questions point to most clearly is the
> inadequacy of the OT font format specification in terms of addressing,
> with clarity of intent, the use of fonts in electronic media. Apart from
> whatever permission bits or tables may be added to that specification --
> perfectly legitimately and following ISO standards procedure --, there
> isn't even clarity about what the existing embedding bits mean in terms
> of web linking.
> New uses for fonts are emerging all the time, and this is one of the
> reasons why I prefer to see a single, flexible format. The distinction
> between 'desktop' and 'web' use seems to me artificial and unwieldy but
> something that we're being forced towards because the distinction is not
> being made where it should be made: at the licensing level supported by
> permissions (even if those permissions are only informative, i.e. there
> is no enforcement requirement on the part of browsers, apps or systems).
> If we're not allowed the right thing, don't be surprised if we end up
> with the wrong thing.
>
> John Hudson
In OTF don't we more or less already have a single, extensible, flexible
font format? We can add fine grained permission bits, additional
licensing information and custom tables, etc., etc. to that format while
remaining compatible with existing implementations.
CF